Apple's alleged Kindle-killing tablet appears to be on the runway for a spring 2010 takeoff. And in what may or may not be related news, two top-drawer US publishers are holding back ebooks of dozens of their upcoming major titles until the same time frame.
According to one analyst's "supply chain sources," mass production of …

Where's the Courier?

3 months ago (alleged) snaps of the Courier turn up online, with spec.s Surely this puts that interesting looking device ahead in the vaporware race, but after that brief blip, it vanishes from online media consciousness and the only thing we here about is the still putative Apple Grail. With any luck this obsessive fixation on all things (real or imagined) Cupertino might mean that the Courier will end up nice and cheap.

Can we call it the Jesus Book...

LCD and EPD?

Wasn't there an outfit making laptops with both an LCD and EPD display, sitting on top of each other (with a transparent LCD on top)? It was designed for lighting/power issues as described above. That tech in a tablet would be pretty sweet. Switch to LCD for the full razz, switch to EPD for just 'reading'.

As a side issue....

.....for £20, I bought a PC-Line wireless keyboard and optical mouse from PC-World; it connects to my Eee PC via a little USB dongle and is fantastic for ease of use on long sessions. The keyboard may not be the sort of thing you'd like to lug around with you, but to have that optical wireless mouse for web-surfing and for photo viewing/editing is much better that using the Eee trackpad.

Eh

I have zero, nada, zilch interest in whatever overpriced, shiny tat Apple bring to the market. I already have an Astak ereader which is absolutely superb and does exactly what I want, i.e. stores lots of books relatively cheaply thus letting me clear out all the dead trees cluttering up my house. It is superbly portable, brilliant to read on and has fantastic battery life.

For everything else I have my Toshiba U820 and a proper laptop, both of which run Linux. I usually buy only ebooks which have no DRM because I utterly despise it.

Note that many publishers are already going down the same lunatic road of regional restrictions, drm and the like that caused music piracy. Also note that many ebooks are NOT cheaper than the hardback or even paperbook equivalents. I suggest the mobileread.com forums for anyone interested in ebooks.

I hope

Why not

just buy a PDA which may work out cheaper? In addition to all of the other usual functions, calendar, spreadsheet, outlook, and mp3 player etc. my HP model has e-book reader installed so I can download and read as many free e-books as I like.

eBook pricing

'S&S and Hachette, to be sure, are motivated primarily by the fact that ebooks command much lower prices than hardcovers'

Guess they haven't looked in the Waterstone's store where eBooks are regularly more than the same hardback from either Waterstones or Amazon. The companies claim this is because eBooks attract VAT, but I reckon it's called 'blatant profiteering' in anyone else's language.

@ iPorn Mags & Netbook killer

First off, I think the iPad would beat porn mags as your tongue won't get stuck in the staples..

That said, the ONLY problem that prevents an iPad from becoming an Netbook killer is the keyboard - that is *always* the problem with input, handwriting only goes so far.

However, there's no reason that what worked for even for Palm can't work here too: external keyboards. What's more, if they install a sensible Bluetooth stack it could interface with all sorts of external keyboards, including that mad device called Laser Keyboard. Your battery life would suck, though.

There's only one real challenge there: none of this stuff is made by Apple..